CMO Survey Results Reported

The CMO Survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association is a comprehensive look into the minds of C-suite marketers like few others. The press release for the survey describes the participants

The CMO Survey, is a nationwide poll of chief marketing officers (CMOs) conducted twice annually by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association since 2008. The most recent CMO Survey queried 3,778 top marketing executives at Fortune 100, Forbes Top 200 and CMO Club companies from Jan. 11-28.

It looks like the C-suite marketing set is optimistic about social media which comes as no surprise because even if you weren’t you couldn’t say it because you would be laughed out of the business (doesn’t mean that you would be wrong but don’t’ dare swim upstream in social media waters!). Spending looks to increase over the next few years.

What is not happening though is the clean integration of social media into overall company and marketing strategies.

This is likely to be attributed to the ‘newness’ of it all. In fact, I would have to question those who rate their integration as very effective because that smacks of having it all figured out. Tough to have something that is constantly changing all figured out. I would say that strong marketers are never satisfied with integration efforts because it is a difficult think to do when all the rules are set. There is little in the social media realm that has a standard result so this moving target will always be hard to hit.

One other area of interest is the apparent slow down in hiring activities. Did companies already staff up last year or is part of the strategy in marketing to make due with what you have so you can keep budgets in line? What’s your thought on this one?

There is a lot of information in the survey and you can get the results here.

What is your level of confidence moving forward as a marketer? Are you seeing improvement? If so, where? What else needs to happen to move the needle in the future? Tell us in the comments.

http://www.cooksmmm.com Narvela Cook

Hi Frank,
I really enjoyed your article and felt it was very timely. I feel it’s great news for social media agencies like C.O.O.K.S Social Media Marketing Management & Consulting to hear such optimistic talk from the CMO’s of Fortune 100 corporations about the social media and the future of social media. It give us confidence that our businesses will grow as more and more businesses start to catch on and understand the dynamics of social media as an online marketing tool. Thanks again for the industry insight. I will certainly bookmark this article.

http://roshanjoshi.com.np Roshan

interesting results regarding the rebound. But the increase in social media investments is predictable – knowing the numbers is good.